Former Jacksonville attorney faces load of foreclosures as St. Johns' new judge

Howard Maltz was assistant general counsel in Jacksonville, assistant state attorney.

ST. AUGUSTINE - Howard Maltz is so happy to be St. Johns County’s newest circuit judge that even a mountain of foreclosure cases doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm.

That’s what Maltz, 51, immediately faces as he starts his new career.

He replaces Judge Wendy Berger, who is now on the 5th District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach.

After a week of judge training in Orlando at the start of the year, Maltz was already hearing cases last week under the watch of Judge Michael Traynor, who’s leaving civil court to take over the felony bench next month.

“Civil is very rewarding,” Maltz said. “It’s very intellectually challenging.”

Although there aren’t hard numbers available from every circuit, Traynor and Flagler County’s Judge Dennis Craig might have the busiest civil dockets in the state because of the volume of foreclosures. County administrative judge John Alexander said there were more than 3,000 foreclosure cases last year in St. Johns.

Sometimes they aren’t the most interesting cases, but Maltz said that’s no reason to disregard their importance.

“There’s hardly a neighborhood not affected by foreclosure,” he said.

Before gaining the appointment to the bench by Gov. Rick Scott, Maltz spent the previous 15 years as deputy general counsel at Jacksonville City Hall. Among his duties in that position was defending the city and the Sheriff’s Office in lawsuits involving police misconduct and officer-involved shootings.

The 10 years before that, Maltz was an assistant state attorney in Clay and Duval counties, mostly handling homicides.

Maltz was on the former CBS show “48 Hours” with the murder case of Adrian Crump, tried a case on Court TV (Matthew Moody) and was involved in a case that was made into a documentary by HBO Films (Brenton Butler).

So if it were attention Maltz was seeking, he would have simply stayed put. Instead, he’s putting on the robe.

“I think he’s well prepared for the job and will do a good job,” Traynor said.